He said: “I am delighted that the Government has brought in this new rule, and I hope that this will prevent pension scams taking place so that pension investors will not lose their life savings.
“Unfortunately, there are still hundreds of thousands of people who have previously taken their money out of pensions and handed over their life savings after being badly advised to invest in worthless, unregulated investments like carbon credits, ethical forestry, storage pods, to name but a few”.
Mr Higgins highlighted just how damaging these investments could be by sharing the story of one of Pension Justice’s clients, Mrs F from Burnley.
Mrs F lost her “entire life savings” worth over £157,000 after being persuaded by an “advisor” from one company to transfer her pensions into a SIPP and “invest” in an EPS Portfolio with another firm.
The advisor paid themselves £3,842.10 in commission and then arranged to “invest” Mrs F’s £149,000.00 in what turned out to be unregulated funds promising unrealistically high returns.
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